


Crashing Down

by missazrael



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Rescue Mission, coming back to Wall Sina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-19 12:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1469707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missazrael/pseuds/missazrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They weren't supposed to go back for Annie.  They did anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You are Bertolt Hoover, and this is the first time you’ve been behind Wall Sina.

It isn’t how you pictured it. You knew Wall Sina was the final barrier, the final bastion of humanity, and the end goal of something you started five years ago at Wall Maria, but you’d had no idea the people behind the last wall would be so… unimpressive. You expected warriors, and got lazy, pampered aristocracy and idle Military Police instead. When you were younger, you sometimes dreamed of taking Wall Sina, and coming back home a hero, someone they would tell stories about for generations.

You miss that younger Bertolt, sometimes. Things were so much easier then.

You shouldn’t be here at all. When you finally came home, limping and bedraggled, two where there should have been three, escorting a foul-tempered, aggressive shifter that no one had known about and who certainly isn’t the Coordinate, you hadn’t been expecting praise. Regrouping, perhaps, a few days of rest and recuperation, before heading back to the walls, to finish what you’d started, and to retrieve what had been left behind. You’d been shocked when they told you otherwise.

_Loss prevention_ , they’d said. _Acceptable casualty_ , they’d told you, and you expected to hear words like that from Commander Erwin, but not from them. Not from your torturers, your trainers, your family. _Her_ family. Not from them. Never from them.

And, for perhaps the first time in your entire, miserable life, you stood up for yourself. With Reiner sitting stunned and silent beside you, you’d stood up, looked them in the eye, and said that was unacceptable. No, they were _not_ going to leave her in the hands of the Capital, they were _not_ going to leave her to be tortured and eventually killed, and if they weren’t behind you, then that was too damn bad, and you’d go by yourself. It was as if an entire lifetime of confidence came through all at once, and the room had gone completely silent in shock, you most of all, amazed at hearing words like that come from your mouth.

Reiner had broken it, rising up beside you and putting his broad, warm hand on your shoulder. He’d told them, in no uncertain terms, that you were right, and that you both had to go back for her. “We don’t leave anyone behind,” he’d told them, his voice reasonable but firm, and you were the only one who knew that was something Soldier Reiner would say and not the warrior.

They’d resisted, not wanting to let you go back, and Reiner had tried to reason with them, had tried to talk them into it, but they hadn’t listened. It was only when you’d brought your right hand up to your mouth and gently rested your teeth across the skin that they’d agreed. The room had gone silent at that, except for Reiner’s voice, loud and passionate, and even that had trailed off when he’d realized he was the only one talking. He’d turned, seen what you were doing, and done the same, and you pretended that you didn’t see the flash of betrayal in his golden eyes. You would never transform without giving him a chance to get out of the way, but they couldn’t know that. They thought they’d created a warrior; it was time they knew they’d actually made a monster.

It was over after that; after a little more negotiation, all done by Reiner, they’d been given enough supplies to get back to the walls and unceremoniously kicked out of the village. You looked over your shoulder only once, and your eyes had fallen on Ymir’s dark form, standing straight and proud between two trainers, and she’d lifted her hand to wave at you. You nodded back, and then had to turn back around, your vision blurring before you.

She had deserved better, better than what you had been able to give her.

You had come up with a plan during your journey back to the walls, one that was almost deceptively simple. You’d lost three days practicing it, three days that you agonized and sweated through, wondering what they were doing to her back at the Capital, and if you were already too late. It couldn’t be helped, though; if you weren’t perfect, if you didn’t do everything exactly as planned, the plan would fail and you wouldn’t be able to get her back, and you’d fall into their hands yourself. Catching the Female Titan was prize enough; you don’t want to think about what they’d do to the Armored one.

You already have enough nightmares.

And so now you’re standing inside Wall Sina, wearing Military Police cloaks you’d found when you’d returned to the battlefield where you’d almost lost everything, standing in the shadows of an alleyway, across from the MP Central building. You remember how the MPs fight, how they’d been decimated by the titans out beyond the walls, and you’re glad the Survey Corps is out in the field right now. The MPs and the Garrison you can handle, but not the Corps. You can’t face your former teammates again, you can’t feel their hatred radiating towards you, burning into your skin and driving deep into your bones. The rest of the world can hate you, but not them. It only hurts when it’s them.

Reiner nudges you with his shoulder, breaking you out of your grim thoughts. “Just like we practiced, right?” You turn to look at him and nod, and for just a moment, you can feel your expression change, turning into something warm and affectionate, something good. He’s the only good thing in your life anymore, and he came with you, he’s doing this with you, and you never deserved to have a friend like this. He looks incredibly silly right now, with a patchy beard and hair grown long, colored dark brown with mud before you entered the city. You know you look just as different, your dark hair shaved to a buzz cut and a thick bandage plastered over the bridge of your nose. Still, you keep the hood of your stolen cloak pulled tight around your head, obscuring your features that are now some of the most known in all humanity.

“Just like we practiced,” you confirm, and Reiner sighs, the sound deep and rumbling, before he wraps his arms around your neck and holds tight, his face buried in the side of your neck.

“Good luck, Bertl,” he tells you, and you allow yourself this, this one moment of peace, before you bring your hand to your face and bite down.


	2. Chapter 2

You are Reiner Braun, and if you hadn’t practiced this a dozen times before, you’d be vomiting into thin air. 

You did vomit, the first few times, spraying your guts everywhere as you rode Bertolt’s shoulder as he transformed. You had transformed countless times yourself, and knew well enough the rush of suddenly growing fifteen meters and packing on nearly uncountable kilograms. Math is not your forte and never has been; all you know is how much more solid you feel when you’re a warrior, when you’re wearing the Armored Titan’s skin and body over your own. You thought you knew what it was like to transform.

You’d had no idea what Bertolt went through.

The first time you’d ridden his shoulder as he transformed, you’d vomited from the stress of it, from the absolute _terror_ of shooting sixty meters into the air so quickly, and you’d fallen off when the ride stopped, your head spinning and your body unable to deal with the stress. Bertolt had caught you in his huge hands, hands that shook as he lifted you to his face and looked you over, his skinless brows knit together apologetically. “I’m okay,” you’d told him, sprawled on his palm and gasping like a fish out of water. “I’m okay, I’m fine.” He’d made a deep sound, surprisingly soft to have come from something so big, and as your vision cleared and your head stopped spinning, you’d wondered how anyone could find the Colossal Titan terrifying. His face will always be Bertolt’s face to you, and you don’t know how anyone can’t see the sadness and regret floating in the dark pools of his enormous eyes.

Bertolt had waited patiently until your stomach settled, holding you close to his chest, and when you were ready, you’d rappelled down his body, using your maneuver gear. He’d transformed back into himself, and you’d tried again. And again. Bertolt would have insisted on continuing to try, if he hadn’t dissolved into steam almost immediately the last time, and fallen to his knees once he pulled free of his warrior, shaking and vomiting blood and burning with fever. He had scared you, the way he’d looked at you and rasped “Again!” even as blood streamed down his chin. It was only when you’d pointed out that you’d almost fallen the last time that he’d relented, although he woke you early the next morning to try again.

After three days, you’d figured out what to do. You’d wanted to practice more, but Bertolt refused, demanding that you get to the city sooner. He’d argued that if the Survey Corps wasn’t there, you wouldn’t have as much to worry about, and you saw the wisdom in that. You’d just wished he hadn’t been quite so insistent, and that he hadn’t worn himself down so much. He’d grown thin over the last three days, his clothes floating on him, and his skin had a grayish tinge, his eyes too wide and staring in his lean face. You’d wanted him to be more assertive for years, but not like this. Not at the expense of everything that made him Bertolt, everything that made him sweet and kind and gentle. Everything that you loved.

And now you’re clinging to him as he shoots upward, your eyes watering even though they’re screwed shut, your ears ringing and the world dropping away below your feet, and then the ride stops and when you open your eyes, you can see over the wall in the distance. You look down, peeking over the huge expanse of Bertolt’s shoulder, and watch as he draws one huge, pillared foot back, and back, and back, and you wonder what the tiny ants that are really people down below are thinking.

Bertolt kicks forward, the MP Central building doesn’t so much crumble as it dissolves, and you slide to the end of Bertolt’s shoulder, dangling your legs over the edge and into the expanse. You don’t wait for the dust to settle before you reach out and pat Bertolt’s neck, yell “I’m going in!” to him, and then slip off his shoulder into nothingness. You fall, your back skimming along the surface of Bertolt’s warrior body, and you have a split second to think about how you only really feel safe when you’re with him before you bring your hand to your mouth and bite down.

You transform in midair as Bertolt throws his massive head back and screams, the sound deafening even to your titan ears, and steam envelops you both.

You land with a crunch and nearly fall—even the knees of a warrior can’t take a drop from that height without some pain, and lumber forward, your appearance hidden by the steam pouring off Bertolt. The steam protects and hides you both, and you hope no one noticed your appearance. A big part of the plan is dependent on the MPs and the Garrison not noticing you’re both there, and on finding her before Bertolt can’t produce his steam any longer. You know that you have a limited amount of time, that Bertolt can’t make steam for longer than a few minutes when he’s in his full form, and you surge forward, digging through the rubble and throwing it out around you, cursing how slow you are, trying to dig deep and find the dungeons before the military rallies and comes after you both.

The steam obscures your vision, hides what’s happening before you, and that makes things a little easier. It’s easier to imagine the bodies you toss aside, battered and broken, even crushed by the falling building, are dolls, or animals, or anything other than humans. Most the ones on the top layer are battered beyond recognition, twisted and as supple as rags, and you can pretend that’s all they are. The ones in the dungeons are harder, the bodies that are still whole and complete but for the places where blood pours from their mouths and ears. Bertolt said that might happen, that the shock waves from his transformation and the building collapsing might kill them, but it’s one thing to hear it and something different all together to see them. It’s not right, not right that they died in their cages like animals, and you can feel yourself slipping, feel your conviction wavering. You’re not a warrior, you’re a soldier, you should be fighting, you should be avenging these poor victims by attacking what caused their death, you should you should you should…

You roar then, the sound agonized and broken, and dig deeper. _Bertolt_. You need to do this for Bertolt, you need to help him find her, he loves her, he loves her and not you, he’ll never love you, he’ll never love someone as broken and monstrous as you, _you have to find her_!

It’s beginning to seem like a desperate search, like she’s not here, when you break through to the final level of the dungeon and see something glimmering in the shadows, supported and held in place by chains. At the same time, Bertolt’s scream stops, and his steam ends with a final, billowing wave.

The Colossal Titan is gone, and so is your cover. You’d planned for this, and you whirl around, your back to the disemboweled prisons, and start looking for him. You have to find her, but even more than that, you have to protect him.

He’s the only thing in your life worth saving.


	3. Chapter 3

You are Bertolt Hoover, and you are sick and weak in the knees after escaping from your warrior’s body. This happens every time you shed the warrior’s skin and come back to your own frail, weak form, but it’s always worse after using the steam. You stagger to your feet, leaning heavily on a piece of rubble, hardly noticing when its sharp edges slice into your palm, and squint through the residual steam and dust.  
He lands right in front of you, several tons of titan, and the force of his landing sends you crashing to the ground again. He bends low and picks you up by the back of his jacket, his hand painstakingly gentle and careful with you, the way he always touches you, and sets you on your feet. You stagger, still unsteady, and he’s there, his face close enough to the ground that you lean against his cheek for a moment and catch your breath.

He couldn’t find her, he wasn’t fast enough, and he rumbles a deep, wordless apology, his breath hot against your legs. You shake your head—it’s okay, you knew that was a best case scenario, you don’t blame him—and spread your hand against the hardened skin of his nose. It looks very small there, a fragile dark star against his hard white bone, and you look up into his eye.

His warrior face is the least expressive of you three, with the plates distorting it and freezing it in only a few expressions, but his eyes are the same. Even pupil-less and glowing, you can still tell exactly what he’s thinking by looking in his eyes, and you lean your forehead against his nose in apology. “It’s okay,” you tell him. “Cover me, and I’ll go get her.” He closes his eyes and rumbles again, affirmatively this time, and you do the same, giving yourself a moment to gather yourself the rest of the way.

Then you push off his face and duck under his massive body, heading towards the cells, and he rises around you, bellowing a challenge and alerting everyone behind the wall to his presence. Drawing their attention away from you.

You stumble at first, your legs as shaky and uncertain as a newborn fawn’s, but the further you get down the narrow, claustrophobic tunnels, the more you stabilize, the better you’re able to keep going. The thought of what you’re doing, about the righteousness of your actions, spurns you on, and by the time you reach the wide, open space with the crystal glittering in the corner, you’re running.

The ceiling of the room is gone, torn open to the sky, and sunlight falls across your shoulders as you run across the room, your shoulders instinctively hunched and one hand across the back of your neck. You can hear Reiner roaring and the sounds of fighting, the zip-hiss of the 3D maneuver gear, the shouts of soldiers, the crashes as buildings fall to rubble, but it’s all distant, far away, like it’s happening to someone else. The soldiers have already deserted this part of the tunnels, fled to go face the monster above them, and you are alone.

You run to the crystal, and it’s _her_ , she’s inside it, hidden away and safe and protected, and Armin was lying, they weren’t torturing her, how could they torture her when she’s like this, preserved and perfect and immortal behind her shell of ice?

“Annie!” Your voice sounds harsh and rough, even to your own ears, and you crash up against the side of the crystal, your hands clenched into fists as you bang them against it, splattering blood from your cut palm against her prison. It lands in an arc, dark red, viscous liquid across the bridge of her nose, dripping slowly off the crystal, and she looks like she’s crying, like she’d been crying as she closed herself away, as she did what she had to to keep your secrets, to keep you all safe, and she is the strongest and best of all of you, you don’t deserve her, she doesn’t deserve this, she deserves so much better.

You pound on the crystal, shouting until your voice shreds apart in your throat, hammering your fists against the immobile, uncaring crystal until the bones in them crack apart and they start to steam, obscuring your vision and hiding her behind a veil of white fog.

“Annie! Annie! ANNIE!”


	4. Chapter 4

You are Annie Leonhart, and you have been dreaming for a long time. It’s cold in the center of the crystal, cold and lonely and silent, and you wait. You wait, and dream. Your dreams are fragmented, indistinct, glimpses and scraps instead of a complete story. 

You dream of your father, teaching you to defend yourself, teaching you everything he knew that he thought would keep you safe. You dream of practicing the crystal with him, of him telling you not to tell anyone else, that it was to be the one thing you always kept hidden away. You dream of the last time you saw him, and his embrace, and him telling you to come home, no matter what else happened. No matter what, no matter how the rest of the world turned against you, that he was on your side, and that you needed to come home to him.

You dream of the 104th, and if you could, those dreams would make you stir inside the depths of your prison, shift against its walls and turns your face away from the lights that filter through to land across your cheekbones. You dream of training together, of eating together, of living and breathing and talking and sleeping and doing everything together. You dream of shared pain and shared triumph, of learning more than you ever wanted about their lives, their dreams, their sad little goals that weren't that different from your own. You dream of Trost, of those same boys and girls torn and bleeding, dying while calling for their mothers, fighting so damn hard to live, to survive, and your eyes burn behind your crystal.

But mostly, you dream of _them_ , of the only ones who ever understood you, and you wish, deep in your dreams, that you hadn’t pushed them away. You wish, and you dream, of them coming back for you, of saving you from this. 

You dream of them bringing you home.

But you know that’s a fool’s dream, that they can’t come back, that they can’t expose themselves, that the mission comes first, before you, before them, before anything, and you are forgotten. You are a failed attempt, you are the weakest part of the plan. You are expendable.

They spent a lot of time down with you, at first; their experiments filtered through, distant and slow, and if you could, you would smile at the futility of it all. You are immune to all of it, locked in the heart of your crystal, and all their attempts end in failure. You cannot be breached. You cannot be disturbed.

So why do you hear someone hitting at your walls? Why is someone’s voice, small and so, so far away, filtering through the cold and the silence to reach your ears? Why do they sound so frantic? The last voice you heard belonged to someone in the 104th, someone who had thought he had lost everything and wanted to punish you for it, not realizing yet, in his youth and innocence, just how much someone could lose and have their heart still continue to beat, their world still continue to turn. You didn’t answer him, didn’t give him what he wanted. This time will be no different.

_ Annie! Annie, come out! We’ve got to go! _

If you could, you’d frown. Go where? There’s nowhere left to go, this is the end of all things, the end of Annie Leonhart and her Female Titan. This is where you belong, somewhere deep underground, hidden away, a spectacle for the military, a prize paid for in blood, a monument to all the souls lost in the Forest of Huge Trees. This is the end. There are no roads left for you to travel.

_ Annie, please! We have to go home! _

_Home_ … the images rush at you then, moving through your mind too fast to focus on, the woods and the homes and your father and the shed where you learned everything you would need to know to bring down the humans, and the 104th barracks and the swirling forms of girls, most of them dead and in their graves, torn apart in Trost and left to burn in a communal pyre, and two shapes, both tall, one broad and powerful, the other slender and graceful, and they loom in your mind, blotting out the sun and hiding the sky, and the slender one reaches for you and _they’re there to take you home they are home they’re here they’re here they came back for you ANNIE WAKE UP_!

Behind the crystal, deep in your silent slumber, you open your eyes, and watch as the segmented world before your eyes shatters into a million jewel-bright shards.


	5. Chapter 5

You are Reiner Braun, and you’re starting to get overwhelmed.

The MPs and the Garrison have improved since the last time you fought them, they’re fighting more like Survey Corps now, and you grit your teeth as you try to get them off you. You feel the pinpricks of hundreds of grappling hooks, punching into your thick plates and anchoring there, and the hiss and whine of zip lines moving past you fills the air. You don’t have to protect the back of your neck, the plates are extra thick and protective there, but you can feel them battering at it, countless blades shattering against you as they try to break through and pull you out. You lash backwards with one arm, trying to brush them off, not caring if they smear and break under your hand. 

You can’t fall. You can’t let them get you. You can’t let them get at Bertolt. You have to keep going and keep him safe.

They keep aiming for your eyes, spinning and launching themselves at your face, but their moves are weak, shallow attempts at what the Survey Corps can do, amateurs imitating the professionals, weak, sluggish children instead of polished warriors, and you swat them out of the air and to the ground. You wish, not for the first time, that you could steam like Bertolt, that your warrior could erupt into geysers of white hot gas and keep them off. You wish, not for the first time, that you’d never said anything, that you and Bertolt were still in the Survey Corps, traveling with your friends and being soldiers. You wish, as you did every night in the barracks when you could still remember to wish for it, that you actually _were_ a soldier, that you had never been set on the path of the warrior and that you didn’t know what it was like to feel the warrior’s body burning and moving under your skin.

One soldier lands close to your ear, pressing up against it, and his voice echoes and reverberates inside your head. “Braun! Stand down! This is an order, _stand fucking down_!”

For a moment, the world shimmers in front of you, shifting and splitting apart, and it’s like you’re in two places at once. You freeze, a statue in the middle of a warrior’s dance, and the urge to follow the order is strong, it’s so strong, you’re a soldier, you’re a _good_ soldier, you’re here to protect the king and serve humanity and the Armored Titan is here somewhere, where is your maneuver gear, where are your comrades, where are the Survey Corps, _where is Bertolt oh god the Armored Titan is here and you don’t know where Bertolt is_!

You open your mouth and try to scream his name, and all that comes out is a deafening titan’s roar, so loud it almost shakes the ground underneath you, and the voice in your ear falls away. The voice near your ear is silent, but it’s still in your head, still there, still accusing you, still giving you an order, and you always followed orders. You were always a good soldier, you did what was expected of you, you followed orders and you didn’t cause problems, you protected all of them as best you could. Your comrades. Your friends. Your… your family. And now you don’t know where they are, you don’t know where they’ve gone, you’re all alone, they’ve abandoned you, they left you behind, the same way you left Berrick behind and this. Is. _What you deserve_.

You are a traitor. You are responsible for the deaths of thousands. You have the blood of everyone who lived behind Wall Maria and died on your hands. 

You killed them.

All of them.

Dead.

Because of you.

You’re not a soldier. You never were. You are nothing but a monster.

You fall to one knee, hardly noticing when an unlucky MP doesn’t get out of the way in time and disappears beneath you. You fall, and hang your head low, trying to stand against the waves of darkness and despair washing over you, trying to find some way to atone, some way to take it all back, to make it all right again. They land on the back of your neck like flies, clustering there, their blades gouging at your plates, and you lower your head further, exposing yourself to them. Why not?

Something shrieks behind you, the sound violent and feral, and a heavy weight falls on the back of your neck, wiping and smearing the MPs away in an instant, and something passes over you to land with a crash in front of you. You look up, and it’s a titan, another monster, this one lithe and quick, swinging her legs and arms out in sweeping motions, her blonde hair flying wildly around her head. For a moment, your mind refuses to make the connection, and you start to struggle to your feet—it’s her, it’s the Female Titan, where are Armin and Jean, you need to save them from her. But then she whirls on you, her expression feral and exultant, and thrusts her hand to you, opening her closed fist and dropping something into your palms. You catch it automatically, whatever it is, and she meets your eyes for one brief, flickering instant before turning back on the MPs with a shriek, her freed hand going up to protect the back of her neck.

You look down into your hands, and Bertolt is sprawled there, looking up at you and panting, and his face is infused with joy, exultant, and he scrambles to his feet, waving his hands up at you. You can’t hear his voice over the din, but you have an idea of what he’s saying.

You give yourself another moment to look at him, to drink in the sight of his smile, of his happiness, before you bring him up to your neck and clasp him there, protecting him with the sinews and bones of your own flesh, and you lumber to your feet, following Annie. You can feel him against the side of your neck—he’s hugging you, splaying his arms wide and open against your bulk—tiny and fragile, a delicate little life form that cares about you, that loves you, that doesn't care that you’re a monster, and his soul is like a flickering light, surrounded by darkness.

You swallow and charge after the Female Titan, focusing on escape and bulling through anything that gets in your way, knocking buildings and soldiers asunder, and the wind against your face runs the tears back and over your plates, scattering them behind you.


	6. Chapter 6

You are Bertolt Hoover, and you are safe and protected behind Reiner’s hand, curling close to his neck and touching him, whispering things to him that he can’t hear, that you could never say if he was actually listening, and your entire body is soaked through from the tears that trickled down between his fingers.


End file.
